John Cena’s retirement tour was full of divisive booking decisions, from his heel turn at Elimination Chamber 2025, to him tapping out, a smile on his face, to GUNTHER’s sleeper hold during his final match at WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event in December. Cena’s final year was highlighted on season three of Netflix’s “WWE Unreal.” In the second episode of the show, Cena and Paul “Triple H” Levesque spoke about the decisions surrounding that final moment.
“John will want to do what’s best to move the business forward,” Levesque explained. “To a lot of us, the perfect guy for that seemed to be GUNTHER. The guy that will garner the most booing from our fan base, most likely to be able to have the kind of match that John will want to have.”
Cena explained he knew GUNTHER was his final opponent before he even wrestled Brock Lesnar at Wrestlepalooza. He admitted that tapping out was one of his first ideas.
“Immediately, when Hunter was like, ‘I’m thinking GUNTHER,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I get to tap out,'” Cena explained. “He’s like, ‘Yeah. You would do that?’ I’m like, ‘This is beautiful. The ‘never give up’ guy gives up.'”
Cena once again explained his philosophy on the match ending, and spoke about the “cycle of life” sometimes ending peacefully. He said that’s how he wanted the death of his character to go, but acknowledged many fans didn’t understand it.
“This was the first time a character was killed off the show,” he explained. “You have to make the character’s death further the show. You give them an unpredictable, controversial ending, which is the ending of my story, but not the story.”
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit “WWE Unreal” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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